The Princess Casamassima (Classics)

by Henry James

  ‘That was mentioned to me, but I ventured to come in to see you, as I have done before,’ Hyacinth replied. Then he added, as if he were retreating, ‘I beg many pardons. I was not told that you were not alone.’

  ‘My visitor is going, but I am going too,’ said Madame Grandoni. ‘I must take myself to my room – I am all falling to pieces. Therefore kindly excuse me.’

  Hyacinth had had time to recognise the Prince, and this nobleman paid him the same compliment, as was proved by his asking of Madame Grandoni, in a rapid aside, in Italian, ‘Isn’t it the bookbinder?’

  ‘Sicuro,’257 said the old lady; while Hyacinth, murmuring a regret that he should find her indisposed, turned back to the door.

  ‘One moment – one moment, I pray!’ the Prince interposed, raising his hand persuasively and looking at him with an unexpected, exaggerated smile. ‘Please introduce me to the gentleman,’ he added, in English, to Madame Grandoni.

  She manifested no surprise at the request – she had none left, apparently, for anything – but pronounced the name of Prince Casamassima, and then added, for Hyacinth’s benefit, ‘He knows who you are.’

  ‘Will you permit me to keep you a very little minute?’ the Prince continued, addressing the other visitor; after which he remarked to Madame Grandoni, ‘I will speak with him a little. It is perhaps not necessary that we should incommode you, if you do not wish to stay.’

  She had for a moment, as she tossed off a satirical little laugh, a return of her ancient drollery. ‘Remember that if you talk long she may come back! Yes, yes, I will go upstairs. Felicissima notte, signori!’258 She took her way to the door, which Hyacinth, considerably bewildered, held open for her.

  The reasons for which Prince Casamassima wished to converse with him were mysterious; nevertheless, he was about to close the door behind Madame Grandoni, as a sign that he was at the service of her companion. At this moment the latter extended again a courteous, remonstrant hand. ‘After all, as my visit is finished and as yours comes to nothing, might we not go out?’

  ‘Certainly, I will go with you,’ said Hyacinth. He spoke with an instinctive stiffness, in spite of the Prince’s queer affability, and in spite also of the fact that he felt sorry for the nobleman, to whose countenance Madame Grandoni’s last injunction, uttered in English, had brought a deep and painful blush. It is needless to go into the question of what Hyacinth, face to face with an aggrieved husband, may have had on his conscience, but he assumed, naturally enough, that the situation might be grave, though indeed the Prince’s manner was, for the moment, incongruously conciliatory. Hyacinth invited his new acquaintance to pass, and in a minute they were in the street together.

  ‘Do you go here – do you go there?’ the Prince inquired, as they stood a moment before the house. ‘If you will permit, I will take the same direction.’ On Hyacinth’s answering that it was indifferent to him the Prince said, turning to the right, ‘Well, then, here, but slowly, if that pleases you, and only a little way.’ His English was far from perfect, but his errors were mainly errors of pronunciation, and Hyacinth was struck with his effort to express himself very distinctly, so that in intercourse with a little representative of the British populace his foreignness should not put him at a disadvantage. Quick as he was to perceive and appreciate, Hyacinth noted how a certain quality of breeding that was in his companion enabled him to compass that coolness, and he mentally applauded his success in a difficult feat. Difficult he judged it because it seemed to him that the purpose for which the Prince wished to speak to him was one which must require a deal of explanation, and it was a sign of training to explain adequately, in a foreign tongue, especially if one were agitated, to a person in a social position very different from one’s own. Hyacinth knew what the Prince’s estimate of his importance must be (he could have no illusions as to the character of the people his wife received); but while he heard him carefully put one word after the other he was able to smile to himself at his needless precautions. Hyacinth reflected that at a pinch he could have encountered him in his own tongue; during his stay at Venice he had picked up an Italian vocabulary. ‘With Madame Grandoni I spoke of you,’ the Prince announced, dispassionately, as they walked along. ‘She told me a thing that interested me,’ he added; ‘that is why I walk with you.’ Hyacinth said nothing, deeming that better by silence than in any other fashion he held himself at the disposal of his interlocutor. ‘She told me you have changed – you have no more the same opinions.’

  ‘The same opinions?’

  ‘About the arrangement of society. You desire no more the assassination of the rich.’

  ‘I never desired any such thing!’ said Hyacinth, indignantly.

  ‘Oh, if you have changed, you can confess,’ the Prince rejoined, in an encouraging tone. ‘It is very good for some people to be rich. It would not be right for all to be poor.’

  ‘It would be pleasant if all could be rich,’ Hyacinth suggested.

  ‘Yes, but not by stealing and shooting.’

  ‘No, not by stealing and shooting. I never desired that.’

  ‘Ah, no doubt she was mistaken. But to-day you think we must have patience,’ the Prince went on, as if he hoped very much that Hyacinth would allow this valuable conviction to be attributed to him. ‘That is also my view.’

  ‘Oh, yes, we must have patience,’ said Hyacinth, who was now smiling to himself in the dark.

  They had by this time reached the end of the little Crescent, where the Prince paused under the street-lamp. He considered Hyacinth’s countenance for a moment by its help, and then he pronounced, ‘If I am not mistaken, you know very well the Princess.’

  Hyacinth hesitated a moment. ‘She has been very kind to me.’

  ‘She is my wife – perhaps you know.’

  Again Hyacinth hesitated, but after a moment he replied, ‘She has told me that she is married.’ As soon as he had spoken these words he thought them idiotic.

  ‘You mean you would not know if she had not told you, I suppose. Evidently, there is nothing to show it. You can think if that is agreeable to me.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t think, I can’t judge,’ said Hyacinth.

  ‘You are right – that is impossible.’ The Prince stood before his companion, and in the pale gaslight the latter saw more of his face. It had an unnatural expression, a look of wasted anxiety; the eyes seemed to glitter, and Hyacinth conceived the unfortunate nobleman to be feverish and ill. He continued in a moment: ‘Of course you think it strange – my conversation. I want you to tell me something.’

  ‘I am afraid you are very unwell,’ said Hyacinth.

  ‘Yes, I am unwell; but I shall be better if you will tell me. It is because you have come back to good ideas – that is why I ask you.’

  A sense that the situation of the Princess’s husband was really pitiful, that at any rate he suffered and was helpless, that he was a gentleman and even a person who would never have done any great harm – a perception of these appealing truths came into Hyacinth’s heart, and stirred there a desire to be kind to him, to render him any service that, in reason, he might ask. It appeared to Hyacinth that he must be pretty sick to ask any service at all, but that was his own affair. ‘If you would like me to see you safely home, I will do that,’ our young man remarked; and even while he spoke he was struck with the oddity of his being already on such friendly terms with a person whom he had hitherto supposed to be the worst enemy of the rarest of women. He found himself unable to consider the Prince with resentment.

  This personage acknowledged the civility of his offer with a slight inclination of his high slimness. ‘I am very much obliged to you, but I will not go home. I will not go home till I know this – to what house she has gone. Will you tell me that?’

  ‘To what house?’ Hyacinth repeated.

  ‘She has gone with a person whom you know. Madame Grandoni told me that. He is a Scotch chemist.’

  ‘A Scotch chemist?’ Hyacinth stared.

  ‘I saw
them myself – two hours, three hours, ago. Listen, listen; I will be very clear,’ said the Prince, laying his forefinger on the other hand with an explanatory gesture. ‘He came to that house – this one, where we have been, I mean – and stayed there a long time. I was here in the street – I have passed my day in the street! They came out together, and I watched them, I followed them.’

  Hyacinth had listened with wonder, and even with suspense; the Prince’s manner gave an air of such importance, such mystery, to what he had to relate. But at this he broke out: ‘This is not my business – I can’t hear it! I don’t watch, I don’t follow.’

  The Prince stared a moment, in surprise; then he rejoined, more quickly than he had spoken yet, ‘But they went to a house where they conspire, where they prepare horrible acts. How can you like that?’

  ‘How do you know it, sir?’ Hyacinth inquired, gravely.

  ‘It is Madame Grandoni who has told me.’

  ‘Why, then, do you ask me?’

  ‘Because I am not sure, I don’t think she knows. I want to know more, to be sure of what is done in that house. Does she go there only for the revolution,’ the Prince demanded, ‘or does she go there to be alone with him?’

  ‘With him?’ The Prince’s tone and his excited eyes infused a kind of vividness into the suggestion.

  ‘With the tall man – the chemist. They got into a hansom together; the house is far away, in the lost quarters.’

  Hyacinth drew himself together. ‘I know nothing about the matter, and I don’t care. If that is all you wish to ask me, we had better separate.’

  The Prince’s face elongated; it seemed to grow paler. ‘Then it is not true that you hate those abominations!’

  Hyacinth hesitated a moment. ‘How can you know about my opinions? How can they interest you?’

  The Prince looked at him with sick eyes; he raised his arms a moment, a certain distance, and then let them drop at his sides. ‘I hoped you would help me.’

  ‘When we are in trouble we can’t help each other much!’ our young man exclaimed. But this austere reflection was lost upon the Prince, who at the moment Hyacinth spoke had already turned to look in the direction from which they had proceeded, the other end of the Crescent, his attention apparently being called thither by the sound of a rapid hansom. The place was still and empty, and the wheels of this vehicle reverberated. The Prince peered at it through the darkness, and in an instant he cried, under his breath, excitedly, ‘They have come back – they have come back! Now you can see – yes, the two!’ The hansom had slackened pace and pulled up; the house before which it stopped was clearly the house the two men had lately quitted. Hyacinth felt his arm seized by the Prince, who, hastily, by a strong effort, drew him forward several yards. At this moment a part of the agitation that possessed the unhappy Italian seemed to pass into his own blood; a wave of anxiety rushed through him – anxiety as to the relations of the two persons who had descended from the cab; he had, in short, for several instants, a very exact revelation of the state of feeling of a jealous husband. If he had been told, half an hour before, that he was capable of surreptitious peepings, in the interest of such jealousy, he would have resented the insult; yet he allowed himself to be checked by his companion just at the nearest point at which they might safely consider the proceedings of the couple who alighted. It was in fact the Princess, accompanied by Paul Muniment. Hyacinth noticed that the latter paid the cabman, who immediately drove away, from his own pocket. He stood with the Princess for some minutes at the door of the house – minutes during which Hyacinth felt his heart beat insanely, ignobly, he couldn’t tell why.

  ‘What does he say? what does she say?’ hissed the Prince; and when he demanded, the next moment, ‘Will he go in again, or will he go away?’ our sensitive youth felt that a voice was given to his own most eager thought. The pair were talking together, with rapid sequences, and as the door had not yet been opened it was clear that, to prolong the conversation on the steps, the Princess delayed to ring. ‘It will make three, four, hours he has been with her,’ moaned the Prince.

  ‘He may be with her fifty hours!’ Hyacinth answered, with a laugh, turning away, ashamed of himself.

  ‘He has gone in – sangue di Dio!’259 cried the Prince, catching his companion again by the arm and making him look. All that Hyacinth saw was the door just closing; the Princess and Muniment were on the other side of it. ‘Is that for the revolution?’ the trembling nobleman panted. But Hyacinth made no answer; he only gazed at the closed door an instant, and then, disengaging himself, walked straight away, leaving the Italian, in the darkness, to direct a great helpless, futile shake of his stick at the indifferent house.

  41

  Hyacinth waited a long time, but when at last Millicent came to the door the splendour of her appearance did much to justify her delay. He heard an immense rustling on the staircase, accompanied by a creaking of that inexpensive structure, and then she brushed forward into the narrow, dusky passage where he had been standing for a quarter of an hour. She looked flushed; she exhaled a strong, cheap perfume; and she instantly thrust her muff, a tight, fat, beribboned receptacle, at him, to be held while she adjusted her gloves to her large vulgar hands. Hyacinth opened the door – it was so natural an assumption that they would not be able to talk properly in the passage – and they came out to the low steps, lingering there in the yellow Sunday sunshine. A loud ejaculation on the beauty of the day broke from Millicent, though, as we know, she was not addicted to facile admirations. The winter was not over, but the spring had begun, and the smoky London air allowed the baffled citizens, by way of a change, to see through it. The town could refresh its recollections of the sky, and the sky could ascertain the geographical position of the town. The essential dimness of the low perspectives had by no means disappeared, but it had loosened its folds; it lingered as a blur of mist, interwoven with pretty sun-tints and faint transparencies. There was warmth and there was light, and a view of the shutters of shops, and the church bells were ringing. Miss Henning remarked that it was a ‘shime’ she couldn’t have a place to ask a gentleman to sit down; but what were you to do when you had such a grind for your living, and a room, to keep yourself tidy, no bigger than a pill-box? She couldn’t, herself, abide waiting outside; she knew something about it when she took things home to ladies to choose (the time they spent was long enough to choose a husband!) and it always made her feel quite miserable. It was something cruel. If she could have what she liked she knew what she would have; and she hinted at a mystic bower where a visitor could sit and enjoy himself – with the morning paper, or a nice view out of the window,or even a glass of sherry – so that, in an adjacent apartment, she could dress without getting in a fidget, which always made her red in the face.

  ‘I don’t know how I ’ave pitched on my things,’ she remarked, presenting her magnificence to Hyacinth, who became aware that she had put a small plump book into her muff. He explained that, the day being so fine, he had come to propose to her to take a walk with him, in the manner of ancient times. They might spend an hour or two in the Park and stroll beside the Serpentine, or even paddle about on it, if she liked, and watch the lambkins, or feed the ducks, if she would put a crust in her pocket. The prospect of paddling Miss Henning entirely declined; she had no idea of wetting her flounces, and she left those rough pleasures, especially of a Sunday, to a lower class of young woman. But she didn’t mind if she did go for a turn, though he didn’t deserve any such favour, after the way he hadn’t been near her, if she had died in her garret. She was not one that was to be dropped and taken up at any man’s convenience – she didn’t keep one of those offices for servants out of place.260 Millicent expressed the belief that if the day had not been so lovely she would have sent Hyacinth about his business; it was lucky for him that she was always forgiving (such was her sensitive, generous nature), when the sun was out. Only there was one thing – she couldn’t abide making no difference for Sunday; it was her personal habit t
o go to church, and she should have it on her conscience if she gave that up for a lark. Hyacinth had already been impressed, more than once, by the manner in which his blooming friend stickled for the religious observance: of all the queer disparities of her nature, her devotional turn struck him as perhaps the queerest. She held her head erect through the longest and dullest sermon, and came out of the place of worship with her fine face embellished by the publicity of her virtue. She was exasperated by the general secularity of Hyacinth’s behaviour, especially taken in conjunction with his general straightness, and was only consoled a little by the fact that if he didn’t drink, or fight, or steal, at least he indulged in unlimited wickedness of opinion – theories as bad as anything that people got ten years for. Hyacinth had not yet revealed to her that his theories had somehow lately come to be held with less tension; an instinct of kindness had forbidden him to deprive her of a grievance which ministered so much to sociability. He had not reflected that she would have been more aggrieved, and consequently more delightful, if her condemnation of his godlessness had been deprived of confirmatory indications.

  On the present occasion she let him know that she would go for a walk with him if he would first accompany her to church; and it was in vain he represented to her that this proceeding would deprive them of their morning, inasmuch as after church she would have to dine, and in the interval there would be no time left. She replied, with a toss of her head, that she dined when she liked; besides on Sunday’s she had cold fare – it was left out for her; an argument to which Hyacinth had to assent, his ignorance of her domestic economy being complete, thanks to the maidenly mystery, the vagueness of reference and explanation, in which, in spite of great freedom of complaint, perpetual announcements of intended change, impending promotion and high bids for her services in other quarters, she had always enshrouded her private affairs. Hyacinth walked by her side to the place of worship she preferred – her choice was made apparently from a large experience; and as they went he remarked that it was a good job he wasn’t married to her. Lord, how she would bully him, how she would ‘squeeze’ him, in such a case! The worst of it would be that – such was his amiable, peace-loving nature – he would obey like a showman’s poodle. And pray, whom was a man to obey, asked Millicent, if he was not to obey his wife? She sat up in her pew with a majesty that carried out this idea; she seemed to answer, in her proper person, for creeds and communions and sacraments; she was more than devotional, she was almost pontifical. Hyacinth had never felt himself under such distinguished protection; the Princess Casamassima came back to him, in comparison, as a Bohemian, a shabby adventuress. He had come to see her to-day not for the sake of her austerity (he had had too gloomy a week for that), but for that of her genial side; yet now that she treated him to the severer spectacle it struck him for the moment as really grand sport – a kind of magnification of her rich vitality. She had her phases and caprices, like the Princess herself; and if they were not the same as those of the lady of Madeira Crescent they proved at least that she was as brave a woman. No one but a capital girl could give herself such airs; she would have a consciousness of the large reserve of pliancy required for making up for them. The Princess wished to destroy society and Millicent wished to uphold it; and as Hyacinth, by the side of his childhood’s friend, listened to practised intonings, he was obliged to recognise the liberality of a fate which had sometimes appeared invidious. He had been provided with the best opportunities for choosing between the beauty of the original and the beauty of the conventional.